थे न्यू फस ऑफ़ वार्फर-UMV

Unmanned Vehicles

The Changing Face of War.

UMV is how they are called and it stands for unmanned vehicles meaning the aircraft is capable of performing its combat duty without a pilot being in it. This is a technology that is already being used in the war in Afghanistan and in the next war there would not be any pilots flying planes into war zones anymore.

The first advantage of this has to be the fact that a pilot can fight from the safety of his base say in the US and accomplish his mission in a war zone in say Iraq. Talk about awesome technology. No more fear about a plane being shot down and the pilot trying to eject from the cockpit. The pilots are going to be so safe that the greatest risks to their lives would be their ability to drive their cars to and from work. This is really good news for families that have been serving the nation in the capacity of fighter pilots from one generation to another.
The military is training young men that are going to be controlling the UMV of the future right now and it is believed that playing video games could give you a head start over your competitors if are planning on a future as a fighter pilot. The video games in question involved those with remote controls and in which you could do precision aiming and shooting. The idea of bombing faraway locations is not new at all. There had been for some time now missiles that could be lunched to far away locations and they are totally unmanned. But the missiles are designed to cause damage to a large area. This was the case during the early days of the Iraq invasion. Shock and awe was how it was called and a lot of work damage was done from the air by precision bombing before any allied soldier touch the ground in Iraq.

The UMV are capable of targeting much smaller areas like people coming in and out of a building. This way a pilot can be in a base in Nevada and target and take out two or three individuals as far away as Afghanistan. It is believe that this is the manner in which some of the leaders of Al-Qaeda are being targeted and killed. With the public increasingly demanding that soldiers be pulled out of combat zones this is going to be a real good way for wars to be fought without a lot of casualties and terrorist could also be targeted and eliminated from far away locations without the lost of human life.

Some of the disadvantageous of UMV are that once they are lunched and reach their location the mission cannot be aborted. With a manned aircraft the pilot can make a decision once he reaches his destination as to whether he should carry out the strike or not. This is good in case there is a mistake and the target areas happen to include a lot of civilians. The UMV would not be capable of doing that, at least the ones that are being produced now. That might change in the future. Another disadvantage would be that there would be one less excuse not to go to war. The outcry about lost life would be lessened and those in charge would have an easy excuse to go to war.
The war on the ground still needs to be fought and the UMV are not going to replace the soldiers on the ground. The infantry has been an integral part of warfare since the early ages of war and that is not going to change in the future. The soldiers on the ground though are going to be getting more assistance from the guys with remote controls in far away locations.

The US had gotten the head start on UMV but they are not the only nation that is producing these vehicles. All of the big guys in terms of military strength like China, Russia, France, Great Britain, India just to name a few are all in the race to revolutionized how wars are going to be fought in the future.